Plan For Fourplexes Has Neighbors Worried In/Around Emersongarfield

Correction: emerson-Garfield resident Rose Fanger expressed concern during a public hearing last week that her neighborhood is “being dumped on” by Spokane city planners. A story in the Aug. 18 North Side Voice coted Fanger’s partial quote but misstated her concern.

Residents of the EmersonGarfield neighborhood were split Tuesday over a proposal to build two fourplexes at the corner of Madison and Alice.

Darlene Becker, a neighborhood advocate who often opposes new development, told a Spokane hearing examiner that the fourplexes fit in well with the neighborhood plan and should be built.

Rose Fanger, who lives across the street from the two lots where the two-story buildings would be located, said everyone in the immediate vicinity is opposed to the development. Duplexes would be more appropriate, she said.

A zoning change from single family to limited multi-family is required before the two fourplexes can be built.

Fanger and her neighbors are concerned about traffic, parking and crime.

Fanger said she also feels like her neighborhood is “being dumped on” by residents of the nearby Corbin Park neighborhood, who dominated the board that hashed out the guidelines for development in the Emerson-Garfield area.

“The people around me don’t feel they were consulted,” Fanger said. Fanger even sat on the board that developed the neighborhood plan, but said she became disillusioned with the process.

“I don’t think we should be included with the Corbin Park people,” she said. “We are medium to low-income. We’re not even on the same planet as the people who live around Corbin Park,” she said of the economic disparity.

John Konen, of David Evans and Associates, said building the fourplexes is the only way to keep out a more intrusive commercial development on the two vacant lots.

Each of the fourplexes will have six parking spaces.

Fanger said that if each of the families has two cars, four extra cars will be parked on her block. Traffic is already congested on Alice Street, she said. Neighbors worry that emergency vehicles won’t be able to negotiate the street and children headed to nearby Emerson Park will have difficulty crossing.

Becker said opposition to the fourplexes reeks of “NIMBYism.”

“They’re not opposed to the 87 units going in on Cora or the 36 going in right around the corner,” she said. “But they don’t want fourplexes across the street.”